A federal advisory committee recommends that Congress improve FOIA requests by modeling the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) after Pennsylvania’s Office of Open Records, which was created by Obermayer partner Terry Mutchler.  

The Pennsylvania Office of Open Records was established in 2008 and Terry served as its founding executive director, appointed by Governor Ed Rendell.  There she created an agency to enforce the Commonwealth’s Right-to-Know-Law, writing the policies and procedures that govern records access for more than 10,000 units of state and local government. 

“What the Office of Open Records in the Pennsylvania model has done is it has cleared the forest, has created a path and has leveled the playing field, at least in the initial stages, for citizens to have greater ease at accessing the records that they own,” Terry said.

Terry currently serves as Chair of Obermayer’s Transparency and Public Data Practice. 

The story was covered in an article, titled “Does the government need a FOIA enforcer?” published on August 10, 2022, in Federal News Network.